A knock on the door

By technologists

From Mel West:
The three-wheeled, hand-cranked wheelchair called PET that was requested by Larry Hills, our missionary in Zaire, had been developed and was being shipped to him. But then what? Where next? How to distribute? How to know to whom a PET should be given?
I had been driving the PET around our block for a couple of years, testing it. One night about 8 there was a knock on our door. A neighbor whose lot adjoined ours in the back was there with another man, Mark Richard, whom I had never met. Mark was visiting the neighbor, and the neighbor told him, “There is this fellow riding around in this weird machine, and I think you need to meet him.”
Mark Richard was an executive and field worker with The Orphan Grain Train, a mission located in Norfolk, Nebraska, that shipped 100 40′ containers a year of mission items to NGO’s around the world. They are Lutheran, but broadly ecumenical. And Mark Richard was a specialist in their wheelchair work. They received used wheelchairs, sent them to nearby prisons where the inmates rebuilt them, and then they shipped them around the world to NGO’s that needed them.
Mark took a look at the PET, rode it around our driveway, and said, “That is just what we need. Let’s talk.”
So, we began to ship used wheelchairs and PETs to Mark. They rebuilt the wheelchairs and sent out PETs all over the world to other NGO’s.
The Orphan Grain Train became very important to us. Their founder and director was about my age (he is now deceased) and we all had the same values and goals in mind.
John Wesley said, “If your heart is as my heart, give me your hand.” We did that and are still doing it.
Mel West